In March 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, two renowned UTAH electrochemists announce to the world to have mastered the phenomenon of nuclear fusion reaction at low temperature, commonly called "cold fusion" and more recently "LENR".
Martin Fleishmann was one of the world's top electrochemists and Stanley Pons was head in University of Utah of chemistry department. He wrote or co-wrote more than 200 scientific papers.
In a 1985 F&P experiment, the cell melted down over the weekend by excess heat.
The reaction, unexplained to that day, was producing anomalous amounts of excess heat. The stakes were huge: lower cost access to clean - unlimited - affordable to all energy, able to radically change the realities of our society.
But the excitement of the first few weeks made up very quickly to criticism and denial of this discovery, qualified as a scientific fraud by the major world instances of nuclear physics.
Inspite of discredit, experiments continued, alongside the official scientist channels...
LENR is also known by the following acronyms :
"A nuclear process, initiated on rare occasions in apparently ordinary material without application of significant energy, that generates heat and nuclear products without expected radiation when any isotope of hydrogen is present."
"In essence, hydrogen atoms are fused into helium atoms inside a material lattice structure. Other element transmutations may also occur."
Chemical reactions produce heat, such as combustion of natural gas. The byproducts have the same elements as you start with. The energy comes from the change of the chemical bonds.
Nuclear reactions involve the change of one element to another or the change of one isotope to another isotope which has another number of neutrons or in the nucleus.
A fission nuclear power reactor splits an element into two other elements (a neutron collides with U235 --> many elements + gamma rays + beta rays).
A fusion reactor combines two light elements into another element.
The following link gives an almost exhautive list of LENR researching entities.
And this other link explores the various ongoing research on LENR.
Quentin Rameau, étudiant en 1ère année de Master professionnel de Cinéma Documentaire à l'Université d'Aix-en-Provence a réalisé un film parfaitement documenté sur les différents travaux poursuivis en France depuis les années 90.
Et pourtant, elle chauffe ! L'aventure de la fusion froide par Master-Pro-documentaire